Tag: writing

Elusive

Published on by PositivelyUnbroken3 Comments

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My cat is a fierce hunter-wannabe. She will chase and play with any bug that enters our house—well, most of them anyway. Occasionally, she is even successful in capturing her prey.

Last week, in her most recent fierce hunter move, she escaped onto the deck, chased a squirrel off our second story deck, and came running back into the house. While she totally meant to chase the squirrel (and win), she certainly didn’t mean to come running back into the house.

One morning this week, I watched as she tried to capture a moth. Her paw was right there batting it—once, twice, three times—slipping down the smooth glass of the window each time. The moth was still and unmoving, but moth and paw were not connecting. Despite her efforts to get the moth, my little cat was unable to capture it, and she couldn’t understand why.

The moth was sitting just on the other side of the window. But that didn’t stop the cat from the pursuit. She could see the moth. She wanted it. And she was sure she had a pretty good shot at it. She didn’t recognize the window as a barrier to her hunting skills.

I got to thinking about her attempts to hunt through the window, her ability to see what she wanted and go after it. And I considered how her actions compare to some of the actions in my own life. So often, it seems, I can see what I want—either literally or figuratively, but I can’t quite get there. There are unseen barriers, and my goal is elusive.

But one day, when I least expect it, I will open the door, and my cat will accidentally slip outside (she’s sneaky like that), or the moth will fly in. And in that brief moment, the barriers between fierce hunter and prey will melt away, and the cat will have access to what she wants. This same type of fortuitous moment might work out for me, as well. If I keep working, keep striving, keep pursuing my goals, a moment of opportunity may arise, and I, too, will have access to what I want.

Upward

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When you start with a blank page, anything is possible. Blank page, blank sky…

Blank is where I start today, and I move to the daily prompt: clouds. Some days the clouds match my mood; some days not. Some days the clouds can determine my mood; some days not.

Today, there are large, fluffy white clouds spreading across the sky, catching sun and shadows in a wondrous ever-changing pattern of beauty and sunshine and summer and lightness. The past few days, the clouds have been captivating, amazing, breathtaking in their summer glory. Uplifting.

Is it that these clouds only come in the summer time? Or is it that I have only noticed them in the past few days because I have finally slowed down enough to do so? I have slowed down enough to pay attention.

For much of the year, I am closed off and focused inward in an attempt to keep things together and running smoothly. I am maintaining schedules for far too many people. Often in these times, the winter sky is gray and heavy with the possibility of snow and ice and disruption.

In the summer, I can loosen my grip, let go and be free. And looking up is a joy. I can go out into the world and experience the beauty of nature in the clouds that seem to dance from west to east.

Yes, the summer clouds are different. They certainly seem different. By maybe it’s just me.

Monsters

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There is a monster under my bed. Really. A monster.

Remember when you used to think there was something under your bed? You used to be afraid to get out of bed (or maybe you still are) because you felt that something might grab your ankles as your feet touched the floor? Perhaps this is an unreasonable fear from childhood that has carried over into adulthood.

And you can’t get rid of it. No matter how hard you try.

In the middle of the night, when all is dark and quiet and your mind is racing from some crazy dream you had, you think about getting up to use the facilities, and you can feel that hand closing around your ankle.

Rather than venture the few steps to the bathroom, you snuggle more deeply under the covers, avoiding the inevitable confrontation with the monster.

This morning, I awoke to find that my normal nighttime companion had been abducted by the monster under my bed. I am deeply thankful that I didn’t have to get up in the middle of the night, as the monster might have chosen me instead of my much lighter companion. The evidence left behind by the monster was more than obvious, and I have recognized that this is a warning for the future.

There is a monster under my bed, and I (now) have evidence to prove it!

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Welcome Home…

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Below is the first journal piece I wrote in my friend Kate’s amazing Soul Reclamation workshop over the weekend. I was not able to give the exercises of the workshop my full focus because of the demands of my job, so I will be working through some of them over the next couple of weeks.

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How long has it been since you’ve been here? Truly been present in this place? Too long ago, I saw you here, lingering just outside the bounds of your self. Lingering longingly, like you had a sense you still belong here.

We’ve missed you. Welcome home. It’s been a long road, and I am hoping you can stay for a while. I know what you’re going to say… life, and all that. That’s always the first excuse. But you need some time to hang out here. To reconnect and get to know us again. To be present with us.

This is a journey, and I will grant myself permission to reconnect with myself, my life, my soul. There is so much that pulls me away on a daily basis. So much that grabs my attention and sucks me out in all different directions so I can’t possibly focus and center and find my wholeness.

This journey, this workshop is about reconnection. It is about finding myself, becoming whole once again, and granting myself the time to recognize that I need attention. I cannot continue to put all of myself, my attention into outside forces if I do not focus some attention on me, on the inside, on the person who makes it happen.

So grab a pen and take a seat. Linger awhile and do the work you need to do.

Welcome home. We’ve missed you.

Soul Reclamation Workshop

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This weekend, I will be joining my friend Kate and several others for her “Soul Reclamation Workshop.” I have written with Kate before, and I am looking forward to the opportunity to do so again this weekend. If you are not busy, or if you are looking for something to jump-start a new direction for your writing, join us! You won’t be disappointed!

 

https://wishingstone.wordpress.com/retreats-and-workshops/soul-reclamation-spring-2016/

Editorial

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“I don’t know how to write an editorial,” W told me when I arrive home from work one day this week. “And I need to write one for language arts.”

I was rushing around to get dinner started before I had to run out again to pick up J from theater practice. “Why don’t you Google it, look at a couple examples, and I can help you when I get back from picking up your sister?” I acknowledged his statement, though I didn’t completely register what he was saying.

When I returned, he tried again. “I have to write an editorial from the point of view of a character in our book, and it has to be ‘historically accurate.’ Can you help me?”

“What do you need help with?” I asked.

“I don’t know how to write one.”

“Didn’t your teacher go over it in class? She must have given you some examples,” I queried, hoping he would think back to the class and remember what he was supposed to do.

“Not really. She never told us how to do it.”

“I’ll bet she did, but you shut off,” I stated, probably more bluntly than I should have.

“What?” he asked, unsure of my meaning.

“You shut off,” I repeated. “Your teacher was talking about it, and you decided it was information you would never need. So you shut off.” A smirk of recognition crept across his face.

“She never talked about it. She gave us newspapers, but she never said we’d need to know it.” Imagine that!

I stifled a groan, and I hoped he couldn’t hear my eyes rolling….

Ideas and Inspiration #atozchallenge

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The A to Z Challenge has piqued the interest of my children, even though they don’t always read the blog posts that result from discussions and suggestions they make about subject matter. The fact that mom is responding to assignments rather than simply writing when an idea comes is much like what they do in school, isn’t it?

Well… isn’t it?

Yesterday, our discussion focused around the letter I.

“What will you write for your I-blog, Mom?” C asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t have an idea yet.”

“’Idea!’ There’s your blog post,” he said triumphantly. As if simply saying a word could make it happen… I thought. An idea without inspiration just wasn’t going to happen.

“That’s it?” I asked him. “That’s your idea for I?”

He shrugged. “You used my idea for F. There’s no reason why you can’t use my idea for I.” He was smiling as he drove home his point by incorporating the very word he was suggesting into his statement.

“I don’t know. I’ll think about it,” I assured him.

“I think it could work,” J chimed in. “After all, what else are you going to write about?”

“Igloo,” my boyfriend suggested. “That’s a good one.” I suppose it could be… if I knew anything about igloos. Which I don’t.

Ideas are funny though; they flit in and plant themselves in your brain, but then when you try to examine them, turn them around, and analyze them so you can write about them, they dig in their heels and refuse to budge. How many times had I struggled to write, even when I thought I had an idea? But then other times, I think I have no ideas when I sit down to write, and amazingly coherent pieces flow out.

Two days ago, for example, I sat down to write my H blog on happiness, but it didn’t happen that way, did it? A hiccup or two later, and here we are at the letter I.

No doubt, I will continue to get help with my ideas through the rest of the A to Z Challenge, and beyond. I’m happy to entertain any idea that’s thrown at me, but don’t be surprised if I sit down to write, and I end up with something completely different.

Ideas are funny like that.

Writing Space

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Written in response to Writing 101, Day 6: The space to write….

My children were very young when I became a single mother—my youngest was 14 months old—but I have never stopped writing. I have “paused” every now and again when life becomes overwhelming, but I have written, at least a bit, through each stage of their lives. Because I also took on an online teaching position, I became accustomed to working with much distraction.

When the children were young, I would work and write while they played—sometimes in the other room, and sometimes right near me. Often, the children would have their various craft projects or drawings-in-progress splayed across the kitchen table; I would squeeze myself in, claiming a tiny little spot of table real estate, just big enough for my laptop. Crayons, markers, clay, googly eyes and cast-off drawings inched nearer with every movement they made. When they were quietly engaged in their own activities, I could write without a problem. However, I developed tactics to deal with noise and distraction.

On one particularly memorable day, I was sitting at the kitchen table working, and W was sitting across from me, bent over some project or another. He might have been about eight at the time. The other two were in the living room, and they were not being quiet, by any stretch of the imagination. I was working, but to keep my focus, I was dictating to myself as I typed.

I saw W look up from his project, so I watched him as I typed. He looked at me, cocked his head and narrowed his eyes as he studied me, pondering what to say. I stared back without pausing in my typing or my dictating. “Mum, can you type silently?” he asked me.

I raised my eyebrows in question and halted my dictation and hence, my typing. “Do you hear your brother and sister?” As if on cue, one of them squealed, and they both giggled. W nodded. “That is why I can’t type silently.” He held my gaze for a long moment before he sighed and turned back to his work.

Since then, I always try to type silently. But sometimes, when the distractions are just too much to handle, I have to type out loud.

A Single Image

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Going back to Writing 101, Day 4: A story in a single image…

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Image is not mine but from Unsplash.com

When I was in college, I took several photography courses as part of a self-designed minor of study. One weekend during my senior year, I got the idea to go to the top of a mountain and photograph the sunrise. It was October, and around here, you never know whether October will be the back end of summer or the front end of winter. I remember getting up very early and piling on layers of clothing. While the forecast was for seasonal temperatures in the valley, the mountain was a different story. Two shirts, a sweater, winter jacket, hat, gloves… I was prepared.

It was still dark as my car crested the mountain and pulled into the small parking lot near the lodge. There was no sign of other people, though a couple of cars sat empty in the lot. The lodge was dark. I turned off my headlights and got out of the car. Stars blinked in the night, but the sky was just taking on a faint grey cast. I picked my way over the rocks to find myself a perch at the top of the eastern slope. I sat in silence; the only sound was the cold wind which swiped at the top of the mountain as if to blow it clean. I shivered, and I remember wondering if I would make it to daylight without breaking down and seeking shelter my heated car.

It didn’t get warmer, but slowly, the sky brightened. The first rays of morning sunlight winked over the distant horizon, and a layer of white fog blanketed the valley. The mountains, in varying shades of blue-grey, touched the sky tainted pink with the promise of a new day. In time, the color faded to a pale blue.

That morning, as I sat on the rock and watch the landscape change from night to day, I realized that there are some things that we truly must experience. I could take pictures to show to family and friends, but being on that mountain, exposed to the elements and taking in the splendor of the scenery as the day dawned was a moment that is meant to be captured by the eye and the brain and the senses, by being present and in the moment. It was a moment that created an image that will forever remain in the accessible archives of my brain.

Abundance

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Posted in response to Writing 101 Day : One word inspiration.

A few years back, when I was young and athletic and fit, I would go out for a run to find inspiration for writing. I used running as a way to move through moments (and sometimes hours) of writer’s block. I found running to be a particularly effective way to generate new stories and to deal with ideas that wouldn’t flow.

Yesterday, I happened upon an article on running and what runners think about while they are running. It was based on a study in which ten long distance runners were wired with microphones during their runs, and they were asked to narrate their thought processes.

Ha! I thought. Wouldn’t that have been a fun study to be part of? Then I reconsidered when I realized that had I been chosen as a subject, I probably would have been sent to the loony bin before the study was over. As a creative person, my mind can string some strange thoughts together, like beads on a necklace that will attract some inquisitive remarks, but will never be the sort of thing that’s in style.

In some instances, there is no doubt that my thought process was similar to that of the subjects—Come on! You can do it! Keep going—just a little farther…. But in other ways, I would have to say my ‘train of running thoughts’ strayed far from the beaten path.

While my feet were pounding out the rhythm of my run, my head was spinning tales from the things I saw by the side of the road, the events of my day, thoughts halted before spoken, and the struggles my head was working through. My running mind tended to weave these things together in ways that might be considered unconventional.

One day when I was running, I noticed a discarded ATM receipt along the side of the road. At first, I didn’t think anything of it, other than the fact that people really should properly discard their trash. Not far away, I passed a discarded Styrofoam coffee cup. Probably the same person, I thought. Took some money out of the bank and bought a cup of coffee on the way home. I kept running.

Down the road a bit was the most unusual piece of the puzzle; a pair of men’s black dress pants was strewn along the roadway. And now it seemed that the person had not only withdrawn some money from the bank, he had withdrawn all of his money from the bank. He bought a cup of coffee, and while he pondered his situation, he decided to quit his job and create a new life, one that was less restrictive and didn’t have the office trappings. No more business attire for him!

Oh my! I can just imagine what those researchers would have thought had they been listening to me narrate these thoughts while I was running. But a great story was hatching. And running was always a means to access abundant inspiration.

May you always have an abundance of inspiration to fuel your journey.